Bowman-Hite Farm: Cultural Landscapes Inventory, Cedar Creek & Belle Grove National Historical Park

Commisso, Michael

The Bowman-Hite farmstead is in rural Warren County, Virginia, on Bowman Mill Road, approximately two miles east of Strasburg. The farm is part of Cedar Creek and Belle Grove National Historical Park, which consists of three discontiguous areas encompassing 3,713 acres across Frederick, Shenandoah, and Warren counties in Virginia. The park includes a portion of the battlefield where the Civil War Battle of Cedar Creek was fought on October 19, 1864, as well as the antebellum Belle Grove Plantation and other buildings, sites, structures, and objects associated with the battle and significant aspects of the area’s history and development. The land within the park consists primarily of open agricultural fields and wooded parcels along the historic route of Valley Pike and lower Cedar Creek, situated between the towns of Middletown and Strasburg. The North Fork of the Shenandoah River forms the southern boundary of the park. The wide right-of-way of Interstate 81 and the modern alignment of Valley Pike (US Route 11) separate the discontiguous areas of the park. Various entities, including the National Park Service, National Park Service partner organizations, and private individuals, own land within the park boundaries. Some privately owned land is protected by conservation easements. Perched upon eight-acres of flat pastureland that gently slopes west toward Cedar Creek, the Bowman-Hite farmstead was constructed during the early 1850s by Charles and Rebecca Hite and was once part of their approximately 500-acre farm. On October 19, 1864, their farmyard was the site of the opening conflict of the Battle of Cedar Creek, witnessing the strategic movement of Confederate Major General Joseph Kershaw’s left flank through the property in preparation for their morning attack on the positions held by Union Colonel Joseph Thoburn on a ridge just to the northeast. In 2003, the National Park Service acquired the farm parcel which includes a vernacular Greek Revival farmhouse built by the Bowman-Hite family that was present during the Battle of Cedar Creek, a ca.1881 traditional Pennsylvania bank barn, a late nineteenth-century smokehouse, a well now marked by a late nineteenth century or early twentieth century stone and concrete wellhead capped with wooden planks, and a nineteenth century historic road trace, all set on eight acres of meadow dotted with deciduous and coniferous trees. Earthworks and other features associated with the Battle of Cedar Creek are located on surrounding lands owned by the Shenandoah Valley Battlefields Foundation, as well as on privately owned land within the authorized boundaries of the park. The views across the cultivated farmland and old field meadows to the wooded hillsides surrounding the eight-acre parcel remain today.

Bowman-Hite Farm: Cultural Landscapes Inventory, Cedar Creek & Belle Grove National Historical Park

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